A chance chat with Richard Burton on a plane launched Kevin Costner's career
Flying home from his honeymoon in 1978, an unsure Kevin Costner walked up to Richard Burton and asked whether he should act. Burton said yes, and even told him an actor's private life need not be chaos. Twelve years later Costner directed Dances With Wolves and won Oscars for picture and director.
Costner arrived on January 18, 1955, in Lynwood, California, and spent early childhood in Compton. His mother Sharon was a welfare worker and his father William an electrician who rose to utilities executive; a middle brother died at birth. He was raised Baptist, sang in the church choir, wrote poems, took piano lessons and loved football more than schoolwork. Watching How the West Was Won in 1962 sparked his lifelong attachment to Westerns.
His father's job kept the family moving, from Ventura to Visalia and elsewhere, and Costner has said the constant need to find new friends drained his confidence. He finished at Villa Park High School in 1973, playing baseball there, and earned a degree from Cal State Fullerton in 1978. Acting and dance caught his interest only in his final college year.
After meeting Burton he took a marketing post that lasted a mere 30 days, while attending acting classes five nights a week with his wife's backing. He paid for lessons by crewing on fishing boats, driving trucks and guiding tourists past stars' homes. His screen debut was the low-budget Sizzle Beach, U.S.A. in 1981; he was Frat Boy No. 1 in Ron Howard's Night Shift. Cast as the dead friend Alex in The Big Chill, he watched his flashback scenes get cut entirely. Director Lawrence Kasdan made amends with a part in Silverado in 1985, his breakout.
The late 1980s and early 1990s brought a run of hits including The Untouchables, Field of Dreams and The Bodyguard, and then the double Academy Award triumph of Dances With Wolves in 1990. He kept directing, including Open Range and, in 2024, Horizon: An American Saga. Television gave him a second peak: an Emmy for playing Devil Anse Hatfield in Hatfields & McCoys in 2012, and a Golden Globe in 2023 as the rancher John Dutton in Yellowstone.
Source: Kevin Costner
